Issue 25: Related/Unrelated (NYC Snow Day Edition)
Soft Labor, is an occasional newsletter about trends in visual culture written by Sarah Hromack. Related/Unrelated is a highly heterogeneous, link-heavy feature whose style hearkens back to my earliest days as a digital editor. Soft Labor is a reader-supported publication and I invite you to share this newsletter and/or subscribe at either the free or paid level. I appreciate you!
Welcome to a short and special NYC Nor'easter snow day afternoon edition of my favorite feature, Related/Unrelated. If you have school-aged children, you've likely spent your morning swearing at your laptop while "troubleshooting" the system-wide technical failure that prevented city students from accessing remote schooling. Personally, my son is playing with legos in my office while humming Ye's "Heartless." We're fine.
Related/Unrelated:
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Where Will Virtual Reality Take Us?: I always appreciate a good Jaron Lanier media moment, especially when his wild, digressing prose is being reeled in by an editor. This piece recently dropped on the New Yorker's website to coincide with the Apple Vision Pro's public release. It's an instant classic. (For those who are, shall we say, on the fence about the Vision Pro — raises hand — I also came across an interesting piece that theorizes on the lack of overall hype surrounding the Vision Pro.)
The Torture of Taylor Swift: I’ve always appreciated Dominick Ammirati’s art writing but I outright adore his newsletter, Spigot, for its solid sense of chatty snarkiness and its wine-related commentary. His recent issue features some of the best writing on Taylor Swift I’ve yet read. So mean. So good.
A stabbing at MoMA: I try not to post links that require paid subscriptions — an increasingly difficult proposition, I might add — but Alexandra Coburn’s essay for Dirt on the physical and emotional aftermath of being stabbed at MoMA (remember that?) is a fascinating read.
The End of Media as we know it: I found Claire Malone’s New Yorker essay on the subject of media extinction to be a bit hysterical at its narrative apex. Still, it gave me a reason to text and kvetch with just about everyone I’ve written and edited with online over the past twenty-odd years.
The TikTok-ification of language: I am both fascinated and repelled by the slang my seven-year-old is bringing home from school. (He just asked me to go to Dover Street Market to buy “drip” clothes. A child of my own heart!) Rebecca Jennings reports for Vox on TikTok users’ rush to coin terminology and how, in effect, social media is changing our relationship with language. I shudder.
“iPad Kids” is a thing: Writing for Jing Daily, Sadie Bargeron investigates the relationships that Gen Alpha has with technology. Though I appreciate this piece's work to differentiate between the way Gen Z and Gen Alpha engage with technology, it’s a bit unsettling to read speculation on my child’s first-grade spending habits.
Generation “Stay at Home”: The Guardian’s Gaby Hinsliff considers why teens and young adults are choosing to stay at home over going out. It’s complicated: Technology (dating and delivery apps, in particular) has made it easier for folks to avoid IRL interactions, but Hinsliff takes a closer look at the socio-economic forces that are also at play.
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Here’s a little blast of the big NYC galleries to do after the slush clears and before the month is through. I haven’t seen any of these shows yet — I rarely hit the blue chips — but I plan to.
Godzilla: Asian American Arts Network at Eric Firestone Gallery: You may recall the controversy back in 2021 when nineteen artists from the pioneering artist collective Godzilla: Asian American Arts Network withdrew their work from a long-planned show at the Museum of Chinese in America in protest of its support for the building of a new jail in Chinatown — the subject of many a Chinatown protest over these past years. Well, Godzilla is having its day at Eric Firestone Gallery through March 16th; Godzilla: Echoes from the 199s Asian American Arts Network focuses on the work of individual artists, even as it takes a collective view.
Extra Taste at International Objects: International Objects is the gallery I’m most excited about these days as a project that seeks to dismantle the boundaries between art and design. Its massive Bushwick space is conducive to sprawling group shows where the works truly have the room to speak to one another. A show that is, in short, about consumer culture, Extra Taste is their latest; it opened a few days back and it runs through April 21.
Thomas Hirschhorn at Gladstone: People keep encouraging me to write about Fake It, Fake It — till You Fake It, Thomas Hirschhorn’s show at Gladstone — probably because it’s clearly “about” technology. As fond as my memories are of getting wildly lost in the South Bronx a decade ago while searching for his Gramsci Monument — remember that collaboration with DIA? — I’ll likely take a pass. But I’ll surely see it sometime before it closes on March 2nd.
Mika Tajima at Pace: Tajima hasn’t shown solo in a while —a move I always respect — and her multidisciplinary display, Energetics, remains on view at Pace through February 24th. I first encountered her performance work with the New Humans a long while back, in the early-ish aughts, and I am a fan.
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